Post Content

Family Circus, 8/6/20

I get what’s going on here — the water is icy cold, which Dolly is blissfully oblivious about — but I have some notes on the visuals being used to convey this information. I guess those are supposed to be “shiver” lines around Big Daddy Keane’s legs, but they look more like steam (giving the exactly opposite impression of what the panel’s going for) or maybe stink lines, which one also doesn’t usually associate with cold. Although that is a creepy combo, isn’t it? A cold stink. Very Lovecraftian. Also Daddy’s skin seems to be turning black below the knee, representing some kind of horrific rapid-onset gangrene. I take it back, this panel is amazing, actually.

The Lockhorns, 8/6/20

This panel manages to pack two incredibly sad facts into a single efficient gag: that once, long ago, when Loretta met and fell in love with him, Leroy was actually a thoughtful, careful person, but now he leans into his own incompetence as if performing for some invisible audience, all the time.

Pluggers, 8/6/20

Pluggers are familiar with the technology that was prevalent when they were younger, in ways that others, who didn’t grow up with that technology, are not. That sure is a Pluggers joke, all right!

Post Content

Mary Worth, 8/5/20

Hey, have you been wondering what Toby’s been up to in the two months since we last saw her, back when she was expressing mild trepidation over having agreed to make a dessert for the next Charterstone meeting? Well, turns out she’s been 100% fucking up the dessert she agreed to make for the next Charterstone meeting! The best part is definitely Toby looking at her kitchen iPad or whatever that is and yelling “What the…?” like she’s shocked to learn her goal is supposed to be a loaf of some sort rather than the two big bowls of goo she’s managed to produce, but I really enjoy the little details, like the fact that she appears to have just cracked a raw egg onto her countertop and is it letting it sit there breeding salmonella.

Daddy Daze, 8/5/20

Obviously it’s just yet another instance of slapdash syndicate coloring, but Daddy Daze Daddy’s icy white skin in panel one makes it look like he was under some kind of wizard’s curse that can only be lifted by an baby’s smooch. It’s pretty creepy! Not as creepy as the overall premise of the strip, which is that a terribly sad and isolated single parent spends all his time projecting his increasingly manic and baroque fantasies onto his preverbal infant, but creepy nonetheless.

Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 8/4/20

It’s bad new for the General that the “Halftracks hate each other” bits seems to have fully detached from their usual scheduled weekend slot and are now just popping up on any old day. It’s great news for me, though, because I’m a black-hearted sadist who can’t get enough of these gags! Anyway, today’s joke is that even sleep cannot free General Halftrack from the all-consuming psychic pain that his marriage causes him; only alcohol’s consciousness-obliterating powers can do that, and only briefly.

The Lockhorns, 8/4/20

Speaking of marital misanthropy, the rather abstract Lockhorns art style makes it difficult to really convey the sort of grunge you actually want a cleaning person to take care of — does anyone actually pay someone to pick a couch cushion off the floor? — but honestly I’m reasonably sure the Lockhorns don’t have a cleaning lady, and that the “cleaning lady” is like George and Martha’s fake son in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, with Loretta bringing her up every time the papers start piling up.

Funk Winkerbean, 8/4/20

[clapping excitedly] EVERYBODY’S GONNA DIE